Anyway haroldus, I read all the comments on the macro business page that you referenced in your other comment. Can’t imagine what *you* would have said there to warrant it being disappeared [no sarc].

But as to the other commenter’s Bermuda Triangle reference, I think that’s more of a thing for those events involving mystery. Not much mystery here… More of an Osorio Graveyard thing (to extend the ‘dissapeared’ context) I would have thought.

Well that’s a new one for me – Thanks.
I’ve been half thinking about knocking out one of them opposed piston motors but with a shorter stroke & a spark plug so I can rev it like an F1 motor. Then I came upon this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y8QqeuvArE ……… Heavier outside rods & outboard piston guide might crimp those revs & upset balance though.

Colin that’s an old one, worked on Dockford diesels in the early seventies about 3-4 stories high, a bit daunting walking past the external rods in a moving ship. I don’t think they were very efficient then though.

15 k rpm A far cry from ours ships diesel (not the Dockford) doing 60- 80 rpm flat out although the newer engines have smaller pistons and crankshafts than my day capable of 22 – 102 rpm . There was a move away from four story high 4 cylinder turbo charged engines to multiple piston and multiple engines either linked or separate prop shafts. The reason for this is they could interchange the pistons and parts from a V18 or any number of piston per engine to other ships in the fleet.

Just saw you post
The Dockford that I worked on was different than the one on your vid. It had from memory con rods on the outside and a walkway alongside.
We used to do crankshaft deflections (normal big diesels) which meant bending the shaft up by means of jacking up the middle mains. Memories of water cooled pistons, piston rods connected to slippers connected to con rods. We used to make/cut our own piston rings. about 6ft diam.
Remember once preparing for crankshaft repair on the “Rubicorn”, when the Asian crew forgot to turn the main engine lube oil pump on (didn’t get far) ( all the engineers got sacked) It cost 1 million dollars to have one journal ground by a team from Germany(a lot of money in 1973)

Always someone in the team you’ve got to watch. I tend to build things strong like the Russians & so they work, but these expectations are beyond experience & feel. I’ll have to find someone with FEA or who can run numbers to see if it’s even feasible.

Colin, you sure jolted my memory banks. That ”Rubicorn” job, remember being inside the engine doing up the huge con rod bolts after the grinding complete with two guys holding up a massive flogging spanner and me swinging a 56 pound sledge hammer to do them up. No wonder when people see me now remark, “Booma where’s the rest of you” .

Hi Colin, Are you familiar with Achates Power, I had some talks with them years ago, but it looks like they are at the commercialization stage.http://achatespower.com/
It’s really hard to get them to talk about how they’ve solved the NOx and particulate problems but I suspect most of the improvements come from the way that they’re controlling combustion temp especially during the warmup phase.
It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this technology.

BTW: Many many years ago I kinda got canned for blowing the development budget by running an FEA package on a Cray Y-mp, I was the only one using the computer so the whole operating / depreciation cost got dumped onto our cost center …completely bogus accounting. But it’s still real when your budget gets squashed for 2 quarters.

Thanks for your insights Fisho. Jelmec’s first vid was from them, but I’ve yet to dig all I can out of their site. If I build it’ll be for the learning curve, but I’d like to feel it’s characteristics out too. It might be ambitious to stick it in an old wrecker & have a track day, but I don’t see the point of just sticking it on a stand either….. loong way down the track before that needs to be decided. By what I can gather Achates now have an electric turbo so they can preboost before startup which may initially help, but apart from that I don’t know what they’re doing about pollution. They’re running it at 18:1 & controlling knock with boost bleed & I’m presuming they’re timing & metering their fuel to help too. If I do mine it’ll be a bit more basic, probably a precombustion chamber & sparkplug, ~9:1 & work up with a blower & turbo if it looks like it can handle it – bl00dy fine line on the edge of Det. The FEA would help with NDT, but if I can’t access it I’ll be basing it off a fast spinning bike & borrow what I can from that I guess, along with it’s vital parts where possible. There’s a couple of mobs that turbo Hyabusa’s that might be able to give me a few clues too. Plenty of sussing to do yet……..

Back when I was playing around with this our approach was a sort of cannula rotating combustion chamber buried within a two stage turbo or gas turbine (depending on how you want to look at it).
I believe Electric turbo’s / superchargers are an essential element in any high efficiency modern engine design, ours was a sort of stepper motor core (permanent magnet rotor with three phase stator) that could be either a motor or a generator. The immediate energy storage out of the turbo was into some special caps that then used a fancy switched capacitor regulator to manage storage battery charge discharge voltages (and thereby control motor/generator function).
Lots of fun stuff and lots of approaches but all the good ones need to extract energy from the exhaust gas stream.

The RS Focus has a different firing order to run it’s twin scroll properly. It comes on heaps early & torques fat all the way to the top. Saving on parasitic blower losses & still having instant (electric) boost at hand is attractive. Something else for the study list! You’re all over this, keep ’em coming, I’m all ears 🙂

the real trick wrt electric superchargers /turbo-generators is the bearings.
Our approach was magnetic bearings coupled with a sort of air bearing effect at high rotation speed, so magnetic bearings made sure nothing banged and scarped while it was getting up to speed but then the air pressure forced out of the central rotor region between the turbines forced the shaft to float. it ‘s hard to think of air supporting something as massive as a permanent magnet rotor but I guess high air speeds it is what keeps planes in the air, so why not.
the guy that developed the air bearings came from a nuclear technology background ….wounder what his last job was?

I can see a growing list of copytech coming where I can, but I doubt I could get air bearings & balancing that good or that well aligned in a shed. Likely do better getting to know a few wreckers of modern exotics for any real schmick bits.

Harry we all know your #1 if bragging rights on MB count you’d swoop her off her feet. Definitely cannot let her know about this Reusa bloke. She would clear out the bank account on Monday and even take the ice cube holders from the fridge with her. I’d get an Instagram link a few weeks later of her off in the sunset somewhere romantic. 😁

When I worked on aircraft we used to drop the stator into an electrostatic bath in a liquid I can’t remember what it was called, and after the timer setting it’d be compressed air dried and put in an over for a bit. It was then tested with a Mega at a few temperatures. Maybe that guy did this, but if you don’t at least Mega test the stator it could be close to breaking down, and pointless with all the other steps. If they did breakdown and I did see it the stator would be replaced. That was a lot of hours to do what he did, but very cool outcome and he’s got all the skills by the look of it. Thanks.

think of all the recycling cash to be made from all the royal tourists who will inevitably come and line the streets to cheer on the parade, leaving all that cash-money in the form of empty bottles everywhere.

is there any money in recycling ticker tape ? Everything could be about to come up Stagmal

Bon Scott? His old drummer, Phil, lives around the corner!
But given that’s about our era of music, I ran across this during my readings yesterday – goodness knows why! Make one feel old!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cozHT9QaFJo

The picture caption makes no sense. Carl Zha points out that every school in China flies the People’s Republic of China flag. It is raised in a weekly ceremony each Monday morning. All the women in the picture above wear headscarfs in the presence of a PRC flag. Will they all be detained for some ideological training? How come they show no fear of being thrown into a “concentration camp”?

The Foreign Policy piece is based on a Human Rights Watch (pdf) report which again is based on interviews with 56 expatriates from the Xinjiang area of China. These people make claims of reasons for which they believe they themselves, or people they claim to know, were put through ideological training sessions. The FP author list all 48 of these reasons, claimed by notoriously unreliable expats, even when many of them do not make any sense.

How can “Trying to kill yourself when in the education camps” be a reason to be send into an education camp? “Owning welding equipment” is likewise certainly not something, on its own, that will put anyone into ideological training. China has an active anti-smoking campaign with high penalties for smoking in prohibited space. To then claim that “Abstaining from cigarettes” is a reason for being send into reeducation is obviously nonsense.

Really?? “Moon of Alabama” ….a web site devoted to Bar Flies as a source for information on China
What next?
China is China, it’s simultaneously the most regulated and least regulated country on the planet.
There are rules about everything even completely contradictory rules, which almost no one knows.
The only important rule in China is the eleventh commandant : Thou shall not get caught
It’s a rule that every Chinese citizen knows….so how do you avoid being caught? keep your eyes open and see how all the street vendors act, if they all pack up early or they’re just not there than somethings is happening (official visit, police crackdown, international event….) you’d be well advised to follow their lead…otherwise it’s business as usual and it is surprisingly regulation free environment.

Brexit will cause crash in housing prices in the UK? if that happens then good. Very good. That has been one of the worst aspects of being the EU’s money laundering financial centre and population ponzi. Now housing is going to be for….wait for it….housing ! Shock horror.

I know shocking right? A bit like the AFR article the other day that stated Labor is crushing house prices due to their changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax.. I mean, good! We were told how many times that negative gearing wasn’t pushing young poeple out of affordable housing or how it was magically helping renters etc.. but now that it might be scrapped suddenly it’s the end of days for property. Rubbish. It’s a stupid concept and it’s been too generous to investors for too long, at the expense of young families etc..

An interesting article because the standard assumption is that ANYONE who objects to the project of globalisation and increasing international binding regulation on the nation state MUST at the very least be a crypto right wing nationalist quasi fascist.

No doubt more than a few of you are aware that many of the very vocal progressives in the media would consider MB and its readers as ticking that box.

The article argues that ‘lefties’ have as much reason to object to the globalisation agenda as those who might be described as conservative nationalists. It argues for economic and political sovereignty for communities ….including what we could call nation states or smaller more local social groupings. It offers a left wing argument for BREXIT.

Is there a place for social democrats and others left of centre in opposing a supranational globalist agenda or are they really just crypto RWNJ as many globalist ‘progressives’ seem to believe.

“…Progressives often stress how neoliberalism has involved (and involves) a ‘retreat’, ‘hollowing out’ or ‘withering away’ of the state, which in turn has fuelled the notion that today the state has been ‘overpowered’ by the market. This is understandable, considering that the political and economic philosophy of vanguard ideologues such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan emphasised reduced state intervention, free markets and entrepreneurialism. This was summed up well by Reagan’s now-famous phrase: ‘Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem’.

This, however, does not fit the empirical record of the past decades…”

Globalism is absolutely core to neoliberalism as it was to neoclassical economics. The so-called leftwinger globalists are their useful idiots, the fifth columnists. While there are lessons to be taken from Marxism, unfortunately its faith like character has spawned a mindless creed that is usefully exploited by the neoliberals. I have no time for self proclaimed “progressives” as they are the most mindless set of morons ever to walk on the face of the earth. They are a religious sect. I had a nice laugh at how the Dalai Lama while visiting Europe hosed down those cretins when he said Europe belonged to Europeans and refugees should go home to rebuild their countries where possible.

I am not sure that useful idiots is the right description as it assumes that they want ‘good things’ but dont understand that what they are supporting will deliver the opposite. I am not sure that their vision of the ideal world is all that attractive.

At the core of globalism, and what I suspect appeals to both the right wing and left wing cheer squads for it, is a belief in universal truths and perfectability.

One solution for all.

One perfect way of running things.

Single markets, open access no ability of local communities to determine their policies, laws and future.

They are aiming for the best!

The irony is that lefty globalists often go on and on about vibrancy and difference but they are pursuing an objective that will almost certainly eradicate difference as political and policy choice is increasingly transferred to global bodies.

Universal truths is what drives the globalist which probably explains why they often display the kinds of sanctimony, religiosity and intolerance for differing opinions we associate with monotheism.

The globalist progressives and the right wing neoliberals are fighting over a single issue.

“While there are lessons to be taken from Marxism, unfortunately its faith like character has spawned a mindless creed …”

Ideological fanaticism, and a desire for purity, regardless of how the world is and changes to become, is a huge road block to progress. Everyone is hung up on something, it’s being able to see that you are and recognise that there is merit in other ideas as well that gives a flexibility to adjust to circumstances.

That’s why I recommend Ha Joon Chang’s ‘Economics: The User’s Guide’s to everyone. No idea is perfect. Most ideas have some merit and can beapplicable in the right circumstance. Every economy is different and should be run to take advantages of its strengths and improve its weaknesses.

pfh quite, though I think that because of their single minded and simplistic creed, they are effectively useful idiots.
footsore “St Jacques wrote…..” I’m being quoted. I’m an authority! hahahaha thx Chang is a must read/listen.
Anyway, this is the level at which most of these imbeciles think (much like those who say “we need better planning”) Have a good weekend.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM

Firstly the Dalai Lama is not what most people think he is nor do they understand the religion e.g. its not all warm and fuzzy.

As far as progressives go it would be helpful to actually denote whom your talking about without broad brushing and then pinning some agency to it. Say New American Century [American Enterprise Institute] and R2P et al are not progressive imo, really don’t think endless military adventurism is a progressive thingy.

pft… MPS is call a transnational economic think tank for a reason and the highjinks of the Chicago Boys say in South America is a historical foot note. Furthermore before the GFC AET was sending emissaries around the globe to meetings filled with “important” people and reinforcing the idea that they were the Übermensch and as such were the result of the market at work, and as such, deserved to both rule and deserved their riches.

That the Dalai Lama is not warm and fuzzy is the point skip. He has caused a stir with his Swedish comments, which are more grounded in the complexity of reality than that of many “progressives” with their simple minded ideas of “rights”,

“Globalisation changes everything” is mainly an invention by the liberal class to avoid serious analysis and cover up their lack of ethics. So they can support collaborators like Keating and pretend they have ethics. When really they have no ethics as they are happy to see society rot. The state has never been more powerful.

Tbh I am so sick of this very liberal (as in US Obama Hillary) or whatever it’s called view on everything in the media of late it makes me sick. It’s pure propaganda and language control to set their narrative. I was listening to JJJ yesterday and they were discussing that little brat who didn’t stand for the anthem. All they could talk about was #I sit with whatever her name is in support of her “courageous” behaviour. Standing for the anthem also means courageously remembering all those white boys and men, (you know the ones that everyone hates right now) that fought and died so that we are not speaking Japanese right now. No mention of this instead the subject is diverted. This fabricated propaganda movement is destroying the western world.

Waving flags (or standing in front of them while lecturing the populace about the need to get a second job to afford a house; while also telling folks that your climate change policy is prayer) is only for demagogues and idiots (and the idiots who listen to the idiots).
Standing for an anthem is idiotic, playing one is worse, nothing but propaganda and thought control while the actual country is ripped out beneath you and stuffed into the pockets of the over rich

Disparaging patronism is easy when you have never had the need to fight to defend what you take for granted. It may be the last refugee of the scoundrel, but it is the first cause that have real men stand up and be prepared to die for what they believe in, defending their family, their friends, the culture. Feminised soy boys, embracing that global matriarchy wouldn’t understand. Consensus and safety in numbers is all they seek – they stand for everything and in turn they stand for nothing.

Well they dont talk about that because they like the idea of a public private monetary partnership that permits more centralised control over economic acitivity.

Naturally the statist lefties moan when they dont get to yank the levers harder to support their preferred resource allocations but they were always dreaming thinking that they could control the private part of the partnership.

007 I use the word “print” as you know instead of “create” as to emphasise the problem. I think the whole game is one of distracting the plebs. This is the reason why Rothchilde bankers control the Guardian etc. They really are useful fools. The power to create money can only continue when people do not know what is really going on. Hence the fatuous distractions and the pretence o f the “left wing” doing what would really upset the “right wing”. They have no idea of the power of the bondholders. They do not even know that the Fed is a private bank let alone who the ultimate shareholders are. They do not know because they are distracted by things that are peripheral. As Nathan Rothchilde would say “if I can write loans I care not who writes the laws.”

“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take away from them the power to create money and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.” (Said to be from an informal talk at the University of Texas in the 1920s, but as yet unverified.)[14]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Stamp,_1st_Baron_Stamp

From the second richest chap in England at the time.

That cash dilutes all the money you receive. Not “printed” but “created”. They don’t even have to pay the costs of the printing.

Hay fitz, banking as we know it started with the the Templars facilitating pilgrimage, some note that in many cases it was more of a hunting expedition to burnish ones man cred back home. Local villages of the wrong sort were soft targets pointed out by their hunting guides, but then again most don’t know their history.

This also completely white washes tally sticks et al out of the picture and lets not forget the major economic crashes through out history have a propensity to be war debt. Wars largely started at the behest of bond holders to secure their assets. So you see you have to be careful abut mixing base money with contracts and human agency.

Banks and Corporatist machinations are a direct reflection of the philosophical beliefs of the right wing, neoliberalism is a right wing creation. This is evidenced by Citizens united and pro Corporatist supreme court appointments over decades. Increased privatization, defunding and defanging regulatory body’s with the revolving door too.

There has been nothing leftie about the last 40ish years when it comes to the markets. In fact the alt rht pick of Trump is furthering this agenda by rolling back what little wet lettuce regulation was put on post GFC and looking to go further than his predecessors. That’s right Trump is helping the Banks and C-corps to further leverage everything including the environment for a short term profit. We know what happens next.

I am much more concerned that our banking and financial system were propped up but left in the same shambles of corruption and instability that lead to our first Great Recession. The innocent and relatively innocent were severely punished and those who engineered and most benefited from the depredations which lead to the crisis were richly rewarded and left to continue their efforts at dismantling the foundations of our banking and financial systems. Worse, the crisis served as a tool for prying even more monies from the public coffers to feed profits into Finance and the pockets of the wealthy via several “creative”, “innovative”, and “disruptive” policies of the FED and the free rein offered to further consolidations of Finance while allowing further “creative”, “innovative”, and “disruptive” new financial products to bring fruit in a “free-market” with limited noxious regulation by the Finance Sector’s wholly owned government — delivered to us as “Change we can believe in.”

You see its the human agency behind it and not the thing that enables.

Jordan Peterson speaks of a duality in the natural order, the ying or the yang, the male and the female, the mother and the father. In our political and social narrative Nationalism, the simultaneous pursuit of self interest and self sacrifice in the interest of ones kin, it is contentiousness and as everyone is told – conflict, it is the Father. Globalism, on the other hand is the embrace of everyone, it is generosity and openness – altruism , it is the Mother.

But the altruism and openness is not without its dangers:

Ben Monkaba was born with Williams syndrome, which is a genetic condition that leaves him vulnerable to suggestion – they are too trusting. “They’ll often overdraft their bank accounts buying lunch for coworkers,” says Terry Monkaba, Ben’s mum. They have to be trained daily in the risks of stranger danger, their openness and interest in everything leaves them highly vulnerable to the worst traits of selfishness and manipulation by others.

It is the same issue with with our social narrative – there is something missing in the DNA of our political discussion, leavint the West suffering from its own form of Williams syndrome.

The excessive openness is failing to defend the interests of the people of our nation. It is a form of gullibility and trustfulness that other people and cultures have no intention of seeking dominance, or displacing our own. It is the arrogance in believing that everyone holds the same values.

Neither Globalism or Nationalism in themselves are inherently good or evil, and both work against each other to keep the system in balance. The mild Globalism keeps the worst excesses of Nationalism in check, just like mild Nationalism should keep the worst elements of Globalism in check.

The antidote to combating the worst excesses of Globalism doesn’t come from pursuing discussion points around milder forms of Globalism, but in ideas found in the promotion of national self-interest; a perspective that is found naturally within Nationalism and one that has been, and is being, deliberately suppressed, and it is leading to disorder and chaos.

Great post Stewie. What I cannot get over is the insolence of deplatfoeming as if the deplatformers has an inate superiority of view that required their view to triumph over any other. The arrogance and stupidity of fools like that requires little respect and I do not give them any.

Cheers Fitzroy/DJW – as I outlined in my link, deplatforming, etc as was being advocated for Bannon is only part of the issue. The bigger issue is how it fits in to the skewing of our social narrative, leaving large numbers of people disenfranchised and effectively without a voice in our political narrative. The sanctimonious sense of moral superiority of those arguing for it and carry out out only makes it all the more galling.

“All of this, so plainly in view but so strangely ignored, makes MacLean’s vibrant intellectual history of the radical right especially relevant. Her book includes familiar villains—principally the Koch brothers—and devotes many pages to think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, whose ideological programs are hardly a secret. But what sets Democracy in Chains apart is that it begins in the South, and emphasizes a genuinely original and very influential political thinker, the economist James M. Buchanan. He is not so well remembered today as his fellow Nobel laureates Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Yet as MacLean convincingly shows, his effect on our politics is at least as great, in part because of the evangelical fervor he brought to spreading his ideas.”

I love the self inflicted bleeding wound chutzpah the far right carries on about, I mean, seems the only grievance is we have not gone far enough too right yet, utopia is just around the corner. I mean I have posted this before on this blog but some still cannot connect the dots.

The main points of neo-liberalism include:

THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating “free” enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers’ rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say “an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone.” It’s like Reagan’s “supply-side” and “trickle-down” economics — but somehow the wealth didn’t trickle down very much.

CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply — again in the name of reducing government’s role. Of course, they don’t oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business.

DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminsh profits, including protecting the environmentand safety on the job.

PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.

ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF “THE PUBLIC GOOD” or “COMMUNITY” and replacing it with “individual responsibility.” Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves — then blaming them, if they fail, as “lazy.”

Its quite hard to understand all the leftie moaning and groaning when the Overton window has moved right for 40 odd years. This is highlighted by all the age cohorts or individuals doing bad things that the “code”, as such, says are defective or ev’bal, and not that the “code” is a steaming pile of dawgs breakfast that the unwashed are so ready to consume without any due diligence.

The main problem appears to be extremism, regardless of the “ism” being spruiked. I don’t care if something is labelled socialism, globalism, neoliberalism or whatever the tribe’s current boogieman happens to be. The best solution to one problem might come from an idea rooted in conservatism; another problem might be best solved via a socialist idea etc. Some decisions will be best taken at the local level – others might require a global body or agreement.

Going to 3 open homes this weekend. I shall report back on how busy they are.

One of which I put a offer on a few months ago and withdrew it. Likely had me offering higher prices against a phantom offer. So have gone back to them with a low ball offer this week over the phone, after their price reduction on REA. The agent said their was another offer higher than that. I think she’s smoking the crack because we’ve played this dance one time before with your junior sales associate.

The newest house on the market, the agent said the owner wants X, I flat out refused and said I am not interested at that price. Suggested some other price ranges around 100k less. Agent said the owner has owned the place a long time. I was non committal about turning up to the open house due to conflicting weekend plans (drinking beer). The agent offered to meet me at the house at another time this Saturday. So I guess spring is busy for her.

The other house is on a bit of a hill but I guess that has scope for a 4 car garage and man cave. So that will interesting. Its also renovated a bit.

All of the above are in Seven Hills 2147. They’re in the proper NBN to the premises footprint and walking distance to the train station. Not exactly my preferred locale, but near mates and commutable to the city without requiring I find parking each morning.

4 car garage and man cave. That’s all you need haha. Low balling in this market has gotta be fun. I haven’t found much lately. And the ones I do like seem to be selling above guide price (unusual in this market) so I guess I’m attracted to the properties that still draw Premiums.

Make a note of the prices on stuff you look at as agents will not always publicise price reductions.

We have noted drops on some properties of between $50k and $100k over the last 6 months.

If you really like a place but dont like the price make a low ball offer in writing and give it a short expiry.

If they keep talking..even though telling you its outrageous etc…. that generally indicates the owner is twitchy or keen to sell. Keep playing with their minds by forcing them to go through the process of saying no to an another offer. Go silent for a while then come back. At the moment time is on your side.

Owners testing the market or who dont need to sell often leave stuff on the market for months and months. You probably will not get anywhere with them.

I tell a lie.. this 1 has me all over it. But they want high $2m range or more. Close to $3m. I don’t see it. Be better off incoming over another house in the area and building something that looks like a warehouse.

This 1 in Brunswick has been on the market forever. I like the fascade. I have some more photos of it that the agent sent me about a year ago when asking price was at least $1.1m maybe more can’t recall.

It will need a lot of work and I suspect it was previously part of the funeral home in front of it. I’m not superstitious but it still makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Also no outdoor area and it’s down a side lane. So for me far too much money. Plus it’s Brunswick, which I don’t love as an area.

So prices have in some cases come off quite a bit, but the FHB segment of the market. Anything around $500-$600k is still elevated in price.

Burnsy pretty much covers it, they want your emotional brain to overtake your rational (especially your partners). Same reason wine tastes better at the vineyard. Reverse the tactics on RE agents. Meet in their office. Or auctions can be your friend when there’s low interest. Have a mate bid against you aggressively below reserve, then ask the auctioneer to ‘put it on the market’ pressuring the vendor to lower their reserve. Your mate drops out. Then make the one closing bid! Love the agents face when that happens.

The petty developers are starting to sell their land parcels here.( 4132 ) They are typically 3/4 acre with one original house ( knock down the other ) and approval for 3 duplexes. I would love to know if it is themselves or the banks who ordered it. Some are Chinese but whether they are Australian Chinese or overseas Chinese I don’t know.

you’re right Arrow, that would work. But as with most “sales techniques”, which are really just specific tactics to play on human behaviour and psychology, you have to be aware of your predilection and the technique being applied before you can even counter it.

Despite looking through it and realising it needed so much work re-done and I was really just interested in it because of the unique aspect of it and the land size. It’s easy to auction to overpay as you forget about other houses in the area and what they have sold for and what their worth etc.. Seeing the guy next to me outbid himself over and over by $50k was also an interesting lesson in human psychology.

After the auction the agents were all like oh sorry you missed out and I was thinking, thank the lord! I said I was fine as it needed lots of work and started to list a few of it’s issues, agent didn’t wanna know hah.

My partner’s sister owns a unit in Dandenong which is up for rent around $300p/week.

Anyway tenant recently vacated. Had an open for inspection today (she’s not Premium listed on Real Estate). So her place is like 5th page in. However nobody showed up. Agent says things are very slow at the moment.

With rental vacancy rates at near record lows in Melbourne I’d imagine there to be at least a few looking. Especially at the cheaper end of the market. But nope nothing..

If my experience in Ireland is anything to go by, when the market pops we will see a huge increase in vacancy rates. However before it blew everything was tight. Not sure exactly why this happens, but I think it’s a combination of building oversupply of apartments and when the economy soured recent migrants left.

Mmmm, when I’ve looked for rentals I’ve never paid attention to premium listings. Hard to say regarding price for Dandy without knowing details but we’re paying 500ish for a 3br rear unit (of 2) in Cheltenham with a dbl remote garage. 300 is probably fair for a smaller unit in dandy.Property manager was super kind this latest property inspection and landlord didn’t come this time either. I think they didn’t want to upset us.

Cameron Murray’s latest report is fascinating. It explains Land Rent Schemes and Community Land Trusts and shows why they would improve housing affordability instead of pumping up prices like the current supposed fixes do.

Whilst I agree with tighter lending standards. Every so often I blow a few K on car parts etc.. the reality is though I save more than I spend and have done for years. Still I find it uncomfortable that a lender has access to all my statements and sprnding history. So if there are items you don’t want scrutinized, pay in cash I guess.. @Reusa that means hookers and blow are paid for with cash. 😁

Even better, draw cash at Coles/Aldi/Woolies.
It shows on NAB breakdown as “groceries”.
Mind you, they can still see cash drawn as the statement shows it in description of those transactions. Too much of it and the red little light in their control centre starts flashing.
Knowing the system allows one to play it.

Here’s some inspiration.https://youtu.be/H_yATzyi-3g
(I watch the above and two things come to mind. The Japanese are full of strange and wonderful surprises, and Tokyo 2020 will be a damn cool Olympiad.)

I’m self taught – used the free lessons on Justinguitar to get down the basics. Once you get the chords down you can find your favourite songs on free sites like Ultimate Guitar, but I think the key is to try and play something every day.

I’ve been learning guitar very slowly and badly for the last few years. Online stuff is OK but I have a weekly lesson with a teacher and it’s invaluable. Corrects my bad habits and keeps me motivated to practice. Finding time and energy to practice with a > full time job and 2 kids is bloody hard though.

Gavin I’m going to guess that teaching involved a fair bit of teaching no-talent kids who don’t practice but you aren’t allowed to yell at them or their parents who think the little sh!ts are geniuses and so it’s all the bad teacher’s fault.

Just booked my first lesson with Geoff from Panania for next Sunday 2pm. that is about 15-20min drive from my place. On the add he claims 30years of teaching experience and over 27 years of playing/performing. he does sound genuine on the phone.
I did explain that intention is to learn as many blues songs (chords and solos) and to understand the theory. I made it clear that I don’t have any aspirations and don’t intend to go much higher than jimi.

The first lesson should be on how to set your guitar on fire as an offering to the gods. Other lessons should be on how to dress with flair and how to rock the headband. To transcend Hendrix you must first become him.

Yellen’s idea, if you can even call it that, is absolutely B-S crazy. But, where in that whole article does this come across as anything to do with “the left” in any commonly understood use of the label ?

Sorry T but neoliberalism has nothing to do with Keynesian economics, neoclassical or neo-new Keynesian [basically the same] are not leftie, unless you consider corporatism as leftie. Neoliberalism became dominate in the mid 70s and still informs the political class.

GIving up on the idea of home ownership, and instead splurging money on consumer goods. Next up is a mountain bike (trail). Probably a Specialized Stumpjumper 27.5.

Undecided on alloy or carbon. Leaning toward carbon because I’m superficial and the colour availability is better, although unsure about crashing it being a beginner and all. I think the whole cracked carbon thing isn’t much of an issue anymore?

I stacked my bike with carbon forks a couple of years back. Not had any problems since then despite a fairly hard whack. (Coming down a ramp off a bridge and the ground was wet, was worried if I tried to turn I’d slip off so I went direct into the barrier instead).

Gavin, I’ll second that, last and present bike Cervelo S5, First bike I was hit by a car, no frame damage, scratches excepted, (forks only destroyed) second bike huge pile up on the flat 43 km/hr first rider hit a pothole, no damage to the frame, destroyed wheels. Although the old guy riding with us (3 altogether) car incident was only one that came off unscathed. Two weeks later His bike ($25k) went under the 3 ton wood chipper and the only salvageable part was one brake caliper.
Stronger than you would think those carbon frames. Get asked to weld titanium frames sometimes but usually steer clear as it cracks after welding very easily. I’ve never had a titanium crack but have heard a lot of stories.

If you are indeed a Mountain bike beginner then it’s not a matter of IF you crash but rather when and how hard?
With that in mind I’d stick with a good Aluminum frame or even stay with steel, there’s nothing wrong with steel frames and they’ll definitely take a beating, they also don’t snap and leave sharp / protruding edges to cut or even impale yourself on.
I’d say I’m a pretty good technical rider especially on loose stuff and to be completely honest I can out-ride most guys on high speed single track or technical downhills stages on any bike, I even won a bet recently riding an off the shelf Aldi Mountain bike…it’s not the bike that’s fast, it’s the rider
My advice is save the big money bike until your riding skills match your budget and you know you’re not going to ram it into the first tree that doesn’t get out of the way.
As for 29 or 27.5 it’s a matter of taste, I ride 27.5 but my son rides 29 when we swap bikes it just feels wrong.
I’d also definitely get a Oneby11 setup

I once graced the profile of a pushie on the front of my 68 VW Kombi….

Whilst motoring with my hot girlfriend on a sunny weekend on the roads of Manhattan Bch, some ninny in a spider man suit felt compelled to mix it with traffic, whilst perusing his individualistic rights. Anywhooo I was turning right at a stop light that then only went about 50m to another right turn on the main Bch road this ninny managed to block my view of the rear tail light of the preceding car e.g. I was turning right so my focus was to the right.

So…. the traffic was tight and even going slow the spider man costume dude ended up between my Kobie and the bumper of the car in front of me when they threw out the anchor due to their poor judgement.

Later that day while rocking up to a friends house they ask what happened to my shmick Bch vehicle…. I just assumed the position and many laughs were had….

More than 30 per cent of grassroots members voted on Friday night to oppose Mr Abbott’s nomination as the Liberal Party candidate for the Sydney seat of Warringah, which the former leader has held since 1994.

The meeting erupted when officials refused to read out the numbers from the secret ballot. Members were heard shouting “disgrace”, “transparency is dead”, and “release the results”. One figure suggested at least 30 of the 90 members present at the meeting voted against Mr Abbott’s renomination, but speculated the actual result could have been as high as 36.

and the best bit:

Sources at the meeting said Mr Abbott appeared surprised by the depth of feeling against him.

…the flog actually believes he’s popular! Still plenty of time for grass roots activism to depose the dolt.

Do we also have a massive bubble in the market for p*ssy? Euro 95 does not sound cheap, so punters are going to these dolls despite cheaper women being available in the red light district. And its definitely cheaper than some grrl-power strong independent career harpy.

Can just see the business, possibly in a side alley in Annandale, red OPEN sign in a grilled window. Tagline, ‘Never mind talking back, these don’t talk at all. Winning!’

Be cool – the artificial womb is on the way. Still a way off, but still, it’ll get there. Five / six years for my money.

On the plus side, the universal translator, v 0.1 is nearly ready. You should see its effects in the next few months – its first iteration is likely to be #WalkAway, in like 60 languages 🙂

When it gets going, the world will never be the same again. Be cool, we are winning, the Invisible War is about a bee’s dick away from becoming substantially more visible.

You will see the FISA memo made available, then comes the military tribunals. Obama, Hillary, and all the other pathetic deep state (((schmucks))), and their handlers. They will be executed, but the rank and file can look forward to a deep dark cell 30 levels under the sub-basement at Diego Garcia, where they will never see sunlight again.

Slowly slowly, disclosure happens. Its going to be a good year.

Also, start buying gold, this turd economic system is going bye-bye. The future has no requirement for a pathetic progressive priestly caste that thinks fractional reserve banking is the only way to manage an economy. A debt jubilee is coming.

Edit: Hilariously, two variants of Klingon too. I swaer to god, its the funniest thing when you plug a #WalkAway video into Klingon.

Edit 2: California is going Red in November is what I am hearing. The majority of the leftist election rigging has been… ended. We think.

Have a look buddy – 20 odd different msm retards debunking what is happening – have a look: https://qanon.pub/#2170

r/GreatAwakening got banned, in the last few days. And exactly 1 day after, all these articles came out. Why are the MSM losers tracking QAnon if its all bs? Why would they bother? Cause they are terrified, and the walls are closing in…

Its going to be a good year.

Edit: Did you know, we lost 80k subs at great awakening on reddit this weekend. Just moved to voat over the weekend, up to 8k now.

Anything’s possible but I will believe it when I see firm evidence. After Iraq lies and that Libya will be better place.. I will never trust a politician again. Right now I start to think Russia probably did it but still not convinced. If they are Russian spies, I still think they would have covered their tracks bit better. And why leaving the evidence behind? Also, they traveled under their real names.

But that’s the point. They weren’t their “real names” but long term cover identities. And the researchers found evidence on their passport files that they are much more than civilians. Read the linked article, it explains what they found and where.

Just read that. If true then Putin and Russia are not very sophisticated. The article focuses mainly on one agent only ( unles I missed something as I did go very fast). Do you have anything on the other guy?
Why would they leave the evidence behind and not try to dispose of it some place safer? And why didn’t they use weapons grade? i am not looking for excuses but I am trying to convince myself.

After Iraq Libya and Syria you can know that there are no lengths our ‘Deep State’ will not go to; no lie that is too bi9g; no faking of evidence that is past the bounds. They are supported in this by the MSM.

Never under estimate any intelligence services capacity for arrogance and incompetence. Remember the French agents who sank the rainbow warrior? They left a string of love affairs as they traversed their way across New Zealand. Thats how they were caught I believe.

Flawse – I wanted to list Syria but was in a hurry so decided to only list Iraq and Libya. But yes, right now the west is threatening Russia, Syria and Iran if they attack Isis and al Qaeda in idlib. Go figure. So long story short, I will need to see rock solid evidence before I will believe..

All these stories are just groundwork for PM Scomo’s impending announcement that we are all about to give Numpty FHBs a “fair go” with some lunatic scheme to pump them full of money and debt. Maybe it’s concessional loans or government equity (ie taxpayers on the hook and sellers rake in the cash). Maybe it’s using super (ie taxpayers on the hook in future when Numpty retires with no super, meanwhile sellers rake in the cash).

I’m wondering if 60 minutes will fall into the same category. Or will it just bash Labor’s negative gearing idea. Hmmm.

It’s ok, I am also a cynic, what’s that Blur song? I’m a professional cynic but my heart’s not in it. 😁

I really think the future is bleak for young people all over the world if we don’t have some kind of housing correction. And it’s not just a fiscal issue, but I also think not having a place of your own is a mental health issue too.

Indeed. The broad implications for society are very troubling – the kinds of neighbourhoods we will end up seeing, the kind of country we will become when we spend all our effort and wealth this way. It’s not really just about me (like you I could buy a house tomorrow if I had to, though I’d need a bigger loan!).

I had never heard of this Water Minister up until about a month ago when the first article I noticed about Sydney’s falling dam levels appeared. It was only a brief article but rudimentary extrapolations of the numbers quoted for the rate of drop in dam water levels were very alarming.
The Minister however appears sanguinely oblivious to what could transpire. Preferable would be a minister who is thought to overreact a little when it comes to water security. I have an uneasy feeling about where this might be headed.

niece had a letter from her credit union last week saying her variable rate mortgage was going up, 25 bps I think.
so she did some research and rang them saying she would walk.
now has a lower rate than before. 3.9% with the same CU.
all for the price of a phone call.
I’m thinking they are wanting the scare off the bad risks and encourage the good ones to stay on their books?

Have had some insight into the workings of a relatively large credit union: if you assume that the average manager / exec in a top 10 retail bank is no better than average (in intelligence, management capability etc); then the average manager of a credit union is well down the LHS of the bell curve.

TRIPSTER
Answer to your question last week about the Wooli Creek building (unit) you were thinking of buying.
1/ The reason of my helping to make/install a water treatment plant in that basement.The developer can get get extra stories added to the height through council due to less stress on the public infrastructure (sewage pipe sizes).
This in imho could cost more in strata fees and also more in lifts etc in future. Fitting more on the same footprint causing more car parking and traffic problems as well.
2/ The workmanship of the building seemed to me OK but I’m no expert in buildings, far from it, hate the building industry jobs.

I was particularly worried about the quality of construction, because it is the building where the crane collapsed onto a neighbouring building. Once that happened work stopped for a while and when they restarted they couldn’t use dual cranes like they originally anticipated, and it ultimately caused the completion of the building to be significantly delayed (the Icon tower still isn’t finished now – it is still a few more weeks away). As I understand it this has meant that Probuild is up for significant liquidated damages. I thought in view of that they would be rushing and looking to cut every corner they could in order to try to reduce the loss they would otherwise make on the building. That’s just the pessimist in me, however.

I’m a tad too young to recall it in any real detail. It’s simpleness and direct explanatory style really appeal to me. All killer, no filler, with a dash of fun.
If you still enjoy the Curiosity Show segments then you’ll probably enjoy this educational film on physics from the 1960.https://youtu.be/T_JddcOv3w0

Imagine if you had a million dollars, what you could do with it… Fifty trips around the world. About eight sports cars (and a Camry for the other half with the spare change). Or take eighteen years off (going by median income after tax).

Or buy that truly unwonderful chunk of real estate.

Geez people are f#cked in the head. Our country is f#cked in the head.

Looks like people in Sydney stopped putting their houses on auction. volumes been flat for few weeks. This is another sign of sellers understanding this a buyers market now. Off course most of us will be buyers when prices drop another 50% from here but all I am trying to say is it is not sellers market.
I can’t wait for November when stocks start to overflow and panic selling starts. if Scomo doesn’t open the super gates all the way.

super will only help people afford the deposit, it does nothing for the affordability and repayment calculations, which have been tightened immensely and are the reason for the market’s current stagnation: ie, the lack of availability of credit.

A bit of hair splitting here … The pathology of this market will be, in my opinion, sellers who bought in some years ago 5- 20 for example selling at the new of the peak price leaving anyone who bought in the last 5 years (or bought poorly) underwater.

Profit taking / takers will reset the prices at first then the panic will set in when its too late!!

Just look at the US example e.g. RE crash 5 million on the curb = BSD like blackrock buy on the cheap and become price setters with renting and attendant land lord crapification = cramming down any service related industry’s due to walmartification dynamics = any prime RE inevitably starts its upward trajectory for those seeking high yield because of past repetitive trends = invariably this ends up with capital controls and resultant price reduction = less credit and less job flows for the labour built up around this model = the lower rungs of the game hold the bag as they don’t have the same ability to diversify asset holdings or enjoy the financial scale multipliers of the financial elites = all lower social castes end up eating the whole thing because of moralistic beliefs about wealth being dawgs gift.

Sometimes in Sydney a jewel shines among the sh1t apartments ……………and this is a jewel of restoration and repurposing ……….it harks back to a time when Australian engineers designed and Australian workers built and maintained trains ………….simple,sturdy, robust and functional architecture that is as solid today as when it was first built …..

Well done to the protectors of this place …….and tough sh1t to Harry Trugabof and his mates who would have other ideas for it

Intresting to see a place that made trains now ( with the help of Deutsche bank ) be a venue for artists to sell their wares …….good luck the artists…..their creativity produces something …………and lucky there is plenty of money floating around Straya to give them customers ……..thank goodness perhaps for property ….trains are so yesterday ……..

Best photos I could find of it. (We didn’t sell it for $9M, we sold it in the mid 90s for around $4m I believe). Although the proceeds were split between my mum and her sisters.https://www.domain.com.au/property-profile/412-430-city-road-southbank-vic-3006
I found a bomb shelter that was put in up the rear of the factory around the time of the second world war because they were afraid the Japanese were coming. There was also old gas masks in there too! Crazy stuff.

It would be a crying shame if this old Warehouse was knocked down. I am of course very sentimentally attached to it, but it is such a cool old building. At least retain the facade or do something to retain it’s original features.

What I wouldn’t give to get it back!
Here are some photos of when we (family) sold it. It never looked this empty mind you, it used to have loads of stock and products in the factory my Grandparents business used to supply.

It has photos of my late Grandmother out front, and my aunt and uncle. You can see how different Melbourne’s skyline looked back then!https://imgur.com/a/eL7S3iV

I keep reminding my mum of what a mistake it was to sell it, but my grandfather had passed away and my grandmother was getting older and they didn’t want to keep running the business so they sold it off and the asset(building). I wish they kept it. I would have turned it into my inner city apartment. 🙂

I shall have to look into it’s history of what it used to be before they bought it.

Great place Gavin
Love old brick buildings ….not only had the bricks to be made individually and baked ….but they were all layed by hand …(and the brickies
were powered by Cornish pasties and pies)….the skill and craftsmanship is a thing of beauty
….fiberous cement sheeting just doesn’t invoke the same romance ….

Exactly why I like them too. My mum worked at the family business for years and on school holidays and or when we as kids were sick our mum would bring us into the office. On school holidays we used to roller blade around the factory floor (had to be careful of the forklift) and there used to be bales stacked up high in the factory covered in dust, which I used to climb on and get filthy. Good times.

The male toilets in the factory used to have naked women plastered all over the walls (like an old mechanics workshop), I recall seeing those naked ladies and realising I was definitely not gay at a young age haha. Shame we don’t have many more photos of it when we owned it, I’m glad someone took photos before the factory was sold off.

The Ipswich Rail Workshops are great place to visit. The Govt turned it into museum, probably due to it’s location…I suppose if it had have been located near the Brisbane CBD it would have been sold off and developed.http://www.theworkshops.qm.qld.gov.au/

The place harks back to a time when we had the capability to design and manufacture a product from the ground up, human capital was valued, and jobs, on the most part, were meaningful.http://thomblake.com.au/projects/?p=15

There is a slight error early on this piece – replace fertility globally is slightly above 2.3, because of high infant mortality in developing countries – 2.1 applies in developed nations only.Hence, if global TFR is 2.4, it’s close to being a rounding error above replacement only.

Anecdote time:- Was at a garage sale today (deceased estate) where the kids (60+) were selling the parents possessions (and later house) and the neighbours and friends were around having a sticky beak. The conversation turned to property and one person was saying how a common friend was in the process of moving. They found a house they liked and bought it and then tried to sell their original place but didn’t like the price offered. They are waiting to see if the market will pick up. They currently have a $1.7 million dollar mortgage (due to not selling their place first). I wonder how that will turn out.

Make no mistake about it, this solar/battery handout is not going to end well.
I predict scam, fraud, and a tsunami of poor quality (perhaps dangerous) product.
NOT a way to drive the development of a sustainable, high-quality industry.

This guy in Prague is also good.https://youtu.be/DMZLvgAGx3A
Man it reminds me of travelling through Europe so many dodgy scams to avoid and people you cannot trust.

I recall when I finally went to Africa and Botswana and expected to have people trying to rip me off left right and centre, however nobody ever did. It was 1 of the most honest countries I’ve been to. Argentina was also ok, but I am careful so I’m sure there is dodgy aspects. I have heard taxi drivers give you back fake currency.

As Australian’s we are a trustworthy bunch and sadly it gets used against us when we travel.

what makes you say “we are an honest bunch” ?
The banking royal Commission?
the Royal Commission into Institutional child rape ?
Federal Politics ?
State politics ?
Local politics ?
The insurance industry?
The Cricket Australia code of abrasive behaviour ?
The ATO attitude to small business?
The soon to be Royal Commission into Aged Care?
The Royal commission into Union thuggery ?
The multiple Inquiries into the Murray /Murrumbigee water theft?
Methinks we over estimate our moral standing.

Gav. Have just finished cruising around South and east Africa. Everywhere I went (Ceres, Montagu, Clanwilliam, Lamberts Bay, Ladysmith) very attractive young women kept coming up to me and asking me if I knew Gav and his cool cars.

This is not a bad watch, some US fundie going short aussie banks. Thinks the time has come. Nothing you haven’t read here before over the years though. But it puts it in perspective again hearing an outsider saying it. I honestly dont know why hedge funds aren’t all over our banks shorting the sh!t out of them.

Without watching the vid yet, I would say
– timing is really hard
– shorting means you are on the hook for dividend payouts until you cover the shorts and that could get really expensive in Aus
– banks here are a protected species so unless things go TRULY nuclear you might do your dough.

It’s not like shorting CDOs in 2007, which was not only (in hindsight) a great bet, you only needed the loans to fail, didn’t matter what happened to the banks. So it was kind of simpler to win.

Arrow – the yank actually addressed each of your qualifers. The fact that he knew that we are ozzies not occies and that Rowena Orr is formidable suggests to me that he’s done some homework. I thought it was a good piece (shame he was not identified), thanks Timmeh.

Yes, I recall the jelly they had in the works bar also. The Pizzas were super rich though, as in loaded with grease and oil. I suppose people wanted healthy options and gourmet Pizzas have really become a thing. I must admit I rarely go for Pizza these days.

His committee is currently investigating the role of migration agents, who often lodge applications for protection visas for Malaysians arriving in Australia on an ETA visa.

Mr Wood believes the applications represent an orchestrated scam that gives those who apply work rights in Australia until their claims are finalised, a process that can take eight years. The committee was alerted to the problem by migration agents.

Applications by Malaysians have increased from 4800 to 9060 in the past two years.

“Any time you can make money, organised crime groups will get involved and that’s precisely what’s happened here,” Mr Wood said.

Migration agent Libby Hogarth said she told the Department of Home Affairs in 2016 that Malaysians were rorting ETA visas on a grand scale.

Ms Hogarth, a migration agent for more than 25 years who does much of her work at farms along the Murray River, dismisses the rhetoric about Operation Sovereign Borders putting people smugglers out of business.

Her first thought, after 15 Malaysians approached her on a visit to the Riverland in South Australia at least two years ago, was that “the people smugglers who have lost their work in Indonesia have moved on to a different model.”
”

I find it amazing that someone going on tilt has been turned into a great big schlockfest about my soggy knees and rashism.

Imagine being worth 140 million, married to a guy worth potentially billions who literally banned any content making fun of his wife, and yet still supposedly “struggling” against oppression. It’s getting utterly ridiculous. Highly reminiscent of the reaction after Hillary lost.

And yeah she needs to lay off the HGH because she’s starting to develop the physical symptoms.

Trump has demanded that China cut its $375 billion trade surplus with the United States, end policies aimed at acquiring U.S. technologies and intellectual property and roll back high-tech industrial subsidies.

“A Serena Willams moment”
Rules and judges are fine until we start losing own game.

The trade war is barking up the wrong tree.
It was not Chinese whom “stole” all the factories and jobs from US.

Concur… Globalist C-corps was quite happy to throw citizens under the bus for a FIRE sector high and then stuff it into the tax haven mattress. Which is even more funny when one considers that forces in America leveraged Brenton-Woods to become reserve currency and the necessity to run deficits e.g. every time they go into surplus the next recession is baked in i.e. Clinton and Rubinomics which has the propensity to lag election cycles.

Lmmao its all just so Chicago boys al a Russia and then getting their ass handed to them, might be something about some self awarded superiority complex. Albeit when it is served up instead of introspection they invariably go the whole Bernays PR scapegoating…. I mean caveat emptor… oh wait… epic buyers remorse…

I reckon ScoMo may have just given away the timing of the next election.

Well done to him for having called it. Aged care is a disgrace. But its such a disgrace that it is going to lead to some ugly headlines, and I wouldnt have though he would want those during the next election campaign (unless it was to take away headlines from the banking RC) – would the banking sector hesitate to throw the aged care sector under a bus to take the heat off itself? (probably not, given the aged care sector is essentially a funds management sector with an aged care facility bolted on)

Haha this is definitely to distract us from what the banks are doing, but what will it be next to distract us from aged care failures? Perhaps a RC into money laundering into Australia or immigration scams?

“One of Lambert’s principles of neoliberalism, up there with “Because markets” is “Die faster”. It’s now playing out as US life expectancy hasn’t just stalled out but has actually declined as older people are shuffling off the mortal coil at a faster rate. But in our best of all possible worlds, Bloomberg tells us that this is a Good Thing because it’s helping reduce pension fund underfunding, since actuaries had assumed increasing lifespans. No joke, the headline is Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions.”

“One of the main underlying claims of capitalism, and of macroeconomics in general, is that markets -and societies- will sort themselves out if left alone. Bruce Boghosian says this is not true, and that he has the math to prove it. The entire notion of markets tending towards a ‘supply-demand equilibrium’ is nonsense, he says (echoing Minsky, Steve Keen et al). Trickle-down economics is a figment of the imagination, while trickle up-economics flourishes.

This refutes much of what our economic systems are based on, which would appear to indicate that we need an urgent revision of these systems. Unless we would agree that Darwin-on-Steroids is a good idea. We don’t and won’t, because it would mean Stephen Foster’s “frail forms fainting at the door” all over the place. A market ideology that causes widespread misery has no future.”

“Can you describe the economy before the recession and how we got there?

A lot of people tend to mischaracterize the crisis as a housing crisis. If it had merely been the inflated values of housing, we would not have had the whole panic we had in the fall of 2008. The financial system seizing up was the result of derivative debts that were piled on top of the housing debts and created synthetic exposures that were four to six times the amount of the real economy’s sub-prime debts. And a lot of those debts wound up being held by systemically important and fragile financial institutions like AIG, Citibank, UBS. Go down the list.

The longer version of why this happened is that you had deregulation that started all the way back in 1970, when the New York Stock Exchange ended its requirement that exchange members be partnerships. That was a very significant shift that hasn’t been noticed. And as a result of the interest-rate volatility in the 1980s, you had lots of deregulation of banks then, and you had the Federal Reserve’s decision not to regulate derivatives in the ’90s.”

In this episode of the podcast, I scream about the former Chief Economist of the IMF suggesting that the Fed should buy stocks and a lady at Wawa who went out of her way to comment on my choice of footwear for the day.

Check out Australia in the bottom right hand corner of this map of Asia and Oceania.
Each countries size is depicted by the number of Squares that represent 500,000 population each.
Makes one think,…maybe we do need to jack up our rate of immigration!!!!

Was wondering.. if mr Sharma ends being funded by Israeli money or Jewish entities that have connections to Israeli government or Defense agencies/companies, would this be considered as foreign meddling or does that only applies to Chinese and Russian cases.

The answer to that simple minded question jumps straight into one’s mind:
Siberia, all of Canada 500km north of the US border, the Amazon, the Gobi desert, the Sahara desert, Antarctica.*
* Only about one percent of Australia has what could be considered good soil, an area less than England, and water, salinity and other issues are serious problems..

Note. I’m taking the liberty of interpreting “country” literally, in the sense of a territory rather than as a synonym for “state” to make the point, and a point that needs to be made for those who have trouble grasping why Australia did not develop like the USA.

I didn’t know that Israel was a hollowing out FIRE debt bubble economy too. Oh wait, they receive more aid from the the USA than any other country and that doesn’t include donations and investment from the diaspora. lol
(btw, why do so many people want to truck up this fragile continent that much for a quick buck, quite apart from living in super-sized rathole cities and ruined coastal areas. wtf is wrong with these people? oh wait, GREED)

Few months ago I reported that when I went to McArthur shopping centre and noticed couple empty shops. Today we visited same place and saw 6 empty shops. It appears we are entering the slowdown but is yet to show up in the numbers.

Frydenberg puts ASIC on notice.. Libs took $100m funding from ASIC and with that ASIC’s capacity to do their job properly and now it is ASIC fault for not having enough resources to do better governance.

I really should be preparing the ute for this gas job ive got on tomorrow morning and Ive actually lost the clients details for this job, …anyway, Ill worry about that tomorrow,… Im enjoying a particularly good afternoon up at the club after the kids soccer and Netball presentations.

If this reveals a fraction of the sh1t that the banking RC
did ……then the outrage should be uncontainable …..
I’d suspect a number of those subject to abuse were from that magnificent generation that defended Australia ( directly and indirectly ) when called .

So I’ll give Scomo a point if he really goes with this (as he should )
A country that profits off its helpless old is truely lost .

I wish Scomo was showing leadership but alas … apparently 4 Corners tomorrow night is showing the first of two part program about how bad things are in the aged care sector. He is using the Rudi Defence: you get some control of the story by getting ahead of it.

It should be remembered that Scomo was treasurer when this government cut $1.2b of assistance from the sector and the current minister for aged care said a couple of months ago that any attempt to suggest that there was a problem in aged care was guilty of abuse of the elderly.

Scomo’s not showing leadership, he’s just attempting to cover his backside.

Yes …..too true …..and if in covering his pathetic arse he opens this sad little epilogue to the end of life of those who built a once most promising nation ….then he will have exceeded himself ….inspite of himself …….his arse covering legacy might at least do some good ….

“China, the biggest soybean consumers, recently placed tariffs on soybeans (25%) and pork. President Trump promised $12 billion in aid to farmers hit by these retaliatory tariffs, and the first payment was distributed on Sept. 4. Soybean farmers were given the most in aid at $3.7 billion, followed by pork producers and cotton farmers.

The second round of aid is expected to be distributed in December, according to the US Department of Agriculture, although it is unclear how the funds will be distributed and how much.

In the meantime, China can get soybeans from other countries. “Brazil and Argentina can have 25% less than us and still beat our price because of the tariff. You’ll see more purchased from there than from us,” Schnitkey said.”

Like Germany in 1938, its arguable that the US shouldn’t be trading with China at all,…a totalitarian military dictatorship, with Nuclear weapons pointed at the US and its allies that has been enormously empowered by being given access to western consumers by a tratorist Coporate Plutocracy and its Political toadies.

The sooner we tie access to western markets to democratic states only,…the better.

“So Herbert Nelson contracted out the PR services of the Foundation for Economic Education to concoct propaganda designed to shore up the National Real Estate lobby’s legislative drive — and the propagandists who took on the job were Milton Friedman and his U Chicago cohort, George Stigler.

To understand the sort of person Herbert Nelson was, here is a letter he wrote in 1949 that Congressional investigators discovered and recorded:

“I do not believe in democracy. I think it stinks. I don’t think anybody except direct taxpayers should be allowed to vote. I don’t believe women should be allowed to vote at all. Ever since they started, our public affairs have been in a worse mess than ever.”

Not really,…not anymore,…its been taken over by a coporate plutocracy that, as you so often point out, is responsible for the subcontracting out of western productive capacity (built up over more than a century of parliamentary/congressional left right dichotomies) and the enormous consumer economies that are a product of that,…to the slave labor state of China for their own pluticratic benefit.
Thats Chinese AND American Plutocrats who are the only winners.

Blokes like this Herbert Nelson are the ones who have always argue for “Free” trade with completely undemocraticly accountable, totalitorian regimes like China, if it enables the political suppression of the working class at home with the Cheapest consumer products as a virtue, propaganda.

This is something that has sat at the back of my mind for a while. Why can’t things stop for just one day? We need not go to church or worship our Flying Spaghetti overlords but nor do we need to shop and attend to work emails and wait hand and foot on others.

For the Hudsonites amongst you, there is reference to historical jubilees in the piece. The author also makes a good analogy between the diminishing rights of workers and the pharaohs of old.

So far it continues to cost me money waiting in Brisbane’s inner west. This bubble just teases and teases. In the same way that cold nuclear fission is always thirty years away, the correction is always one or two years away. In the meantime the urban middle class continue to be house Horney and bidding the prices higher and higher. Anyone else here from Brisbane? Is this your observation too?

The potential for a rapid escalation in compensation payouts and litigation involving mortgage cases would not only be costly for the banks, but make it more difficult to restore community trust in a hostile political and regulatory environment.

“I think home lending is the big sleeper issue out of the royal commission,” said Josh Mennen, who runs Maurice Blackburn’s financial services practice. He has seen a spike in inquiries from borrowers suffering mortgage stress from one a fortnight to around five a day.

The firm’s test cases, which could be filed before the end of the year, will target the falsification of assets by banks and brokers selling mortgages, the use of the so-called Household Expenditure Measure (HEM) to determine if borrowers can repay a loan, and the provision of interest-only home loans. Investment bank UBS estimates one-in-three customers don’t know their loan is on interest-only terms.]